I always find it amazing that many of the same people who oppose funding government through progressive taxes such as the income tax also claim to oppose regressive taxes such as the gas tax and other taxes on consumption.

Davidson takes that idea and has some fun with it, imagining all sorts of behaviors he'd like to see taxed. He leaves out the use of leaf blowers, but his list is good reading anyway:

In my Brooklyn neighborhood, I notice that some neighbors have well-tended gardens that make my walk to the subway more enjoyable. Others, less so. (Taken as a whole, they also play a subtle but significant role in determining property values.) Can’t we tax the sloppy and subsidize the beautifiers? Every time someone drops out of high school, he increases the likelihood of crime and reliance on public assistance and decreases the overall rise in G.D.P. Should we tax them? Or their teachers? What about taxing obese people who increase the costs of our health care system? Or should we tax fast-food companies instead? (This fall, voters in California defeated ballot measures to impose a tax on sugary drinks.)

The knee-jerk response to response to this from would-be conservatives is that government should not control behavior through taxation.

This response is stupid.

The most prominent tax is the income tax. And the income tax penalizes the very behavior the government should be encouraging, the earning of income. The income tax is the worst tax of all, if encouraging productive behavior is your goal. Any other tax is preferable.

If the government is going to raise revenues there are just two means of doing so: 1. Taxes on income or personal wealth, and 2. Taxes on consumption, whether in the form of sales taxes or tariffs.

Conservatives should favor the latter, just as liberals should favor the former.

But how about just cutting spending? We all support that. Well, all of us except those supposed "conservatives" in Congress who want to spend even more on the military and Medicare - and also claim to balance the budget.

If you fell for that line from Mitt Romney, watch the video below. I ran it the other day on my blog, but I'll run it again. In fact I may run it every day until the people in Washington get serious about balancing the budget.